“Oh, Daddy,” I say, “I can’t possibly…” but he holds up a hand in refusal and assures me I can. But he’ll need my help posting the car online; he asks if he can send me photos. I’m far from a technological savant, but I know my way around the internet far better than he, and he promises to email them to me just as soon as he gets home. “How much?” I ask.
“Five thousand,” he says. “It’s not much,” he adds, “but it’s something, at least until Nick’s life insurance pays out,” and at that I inhale sharply, wanting to confess to my father about the life insurance and how it’s been canceled, how it won’t ever pay out. But I don’t. I bite my tongue and say nothing, knowing what my father would say if he knew about Nick purchasing drugs from Melinda Grey, about him sleeping with Kat, about the canceled life insurance policy, about Nick’s duplicitous life. That man will only bring you down, he’d told me when I displayed my hand proudly before him nearly half a dozen years ago, one that flaunted a simple engagement ring, a timeless solitaire marquise diamond on fourteen karats of white gold. Don’t do this, Clarabelle. Don’t marry him. There are more fish in the sea, he had said, but I told him I didn’t want any more fish. I only wanted Nick.
My father hugs me and thanks me for doing him this favor, though we both know it’s him who is doing me a favor. In my arms, he feels rangy, as thin as a rake. My father used to be a marathoner, thin but robust. He could run for nearly forever without breaking a sweat. Now he’s just thin, and I want to ask if he’s eating okay, if he’s sleeping okay, if he’s paying enough attention to his own health or only to my mother and me. There are bags beneath his eyes, big, burlap potato sacks, and I wonder when is the last time he’s been to the doctor. I touch those few strands of hair upon his head, a maternal gesture. “It’s the least that I can do,” I say, “for all you’ve done for me,” and again we hug.
“I could do more,” he says, but I say no, he’s done enough, and with that he turns and leaves. Before he’s halfway to his own car parked at the end of the drive, he tells me that his HVAC guy will be here tomorrow at three, his treat, and it’s then that I notice the sleeves of his button-down shirt thrust clear to his elbows, the dewdrops of sweat that bind to his skin thanks to our un-air-conditioned home. The heat is suddenly stifling, and I find that it’s difficult to breathe. I never told my father that we were in financial crisis, and still he knows. He knows everything.
“I’d come,” he says, “to keep you company while they’re here. But I can’t this time, Clarabelle. Your mother also has an appointment at three. The neurologist,” he says, and I shake my head and tell him it’s no bother. I’m a big girl. I can handle this all by myself.
NICK
BEFORE
I get the idea at work as I’m sorting through the patient files for an afternoon appointment, one that my hygienist forgot to pull. I go into the stacks searching for the file for one William Grayson, and end up leaving a few seconds later with the file for Melinda Grey clutched in my hands, finding the two files perched side by side on the metal shelves in alphabetical order. In criminal law, it’s all about intent—mens rea, or in English: guilty mind. It’s something I don’t have. I have no intent to harm Melinda Grey. I didn’t even intend to pull her file from the stacks.
And yet here it is in my hand.
I tell Nancy to reschedule my appointment with William Grayson. I tell her I’m feeling sick.
The home is small and dated, a single-story house on the south side of town. It has big, squarish windows in the front, flanked with shutters, and a low roofline that hangs too low for my taste. The landscaping is mature but sad, the periphery of the home beleaguered by boxwood hedging. In the driveway rests a dark sedan, black or maybe blue, a forgotten sunroof left open, the interior leather absorbing the oppressive heat of the day.
I stop the car just shy of the house and put it in Park, sitting there in the front seat, trying hard to catch my breath.
As I step slowly from the car and make my way up the asphalt driveway, I have every intention of just trying to talk some sense into her, to try to get her to understand my position. To apologize, as all websites said was paramount to avoiding a malpractice suit. Maybe I should have just apologized in the first place. I never had the chance to explain.
And so that’s my intention for coming to see Melinda Grey: to explain.
Malice aforethought, in the legal world, is a conscious intent to cause somebody harm, and that’s not what I have. The thought never even crosses my mind, not until the door opens, and there she stands, Melinda Grey, glaring through the two-inch gap back at me, the weight of her body pressed behind the door in case I try to force my way in.
And then suddenly the only thing on my mind is causing this woman bodily harm, this woman who’s trying to spoil my life.
“Go away,” she snaps through the doorway. “Go away or I’ll scream,” and she’s saying it as if I’ve already hurt her, as if I’m trying to push that door open against the weight of her, though I’m not. I stand a good twelve inches away from the door frame, my hands in the pockets of my khaki pants.
“I just want to talk to you,” I say. “See if there’s any way I can make this up to you, without the need for lawyers and insurance companies and all that. Maybe we can work this out our own way,” I tell her, holding my hands up in deference and saying, “I swear.”
But Ms. Grey will not talk to me. The two-inch gap becomes one, and though I use every ounce of self-control I can possibly manage, the toe of my loafer still collides with the front door so that it can’t close. She tries to push, but still it won’t close, and before I know what’s happening, my hands are on the door, too, forcing it open, so that I see her fully, my six-foot frame overlooking her by a good foot.
“You seem like a reasonable person,” I say to her, “a good person,” but she’s backing away from me, and I find myself moving closer. There’s a cat in the backdrop, a Siamese who sits perched on the top of a TV stand, watching me. A witness. “I have more to lose than you can imagine,” I explain, telling her about my wife, my children, my practice. If I explain, then maybe she’ll understand. Maybe she’ll drop the whole suit.
But what I’m not thinking about is how much Melinda has to gain from the settlement: hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“You tried to kill me,” she says, and like that her benign eyes turn cancerous before my eyes. I see her for what she is: a liar and a con.
“You didn’t return for your follow-up appointment,” I say. “You were supposed to watch for signs of infection and call if you had any concerns. Any concerns, at all, I told you. I gave you my cell phone number,” I insist. “I told you to call anytime. You didn’t call. You didn’t call.”